ATHENAEUM Studi di Letteratura e Storia dell’Antichità pubblicati sotto gli auspici dell’Università di Pavia VOLUME CENTOSEISIMO I 2018 ———— Estratto Recensioni e notizie di pubblicazioni ISSN 0004-6574 AMMINISTRAZIONE DI ATHENÆUM UNIVERSITÀ - PAVIA COMO - NEW PRESS EDIZIONI - 2018 Athenaeum 106/1 (2018) 313 non seguito dal Nebrissensis), che nell’edizione veneziana del 1501 ai vv. 36-38 stampa: Sed Quirinus ut eminus | Os circuntulis, heu tuos, | Exemplo trepidos, introducendo un appello al martire in seconda persona. v. 78 (pp. 170-171): il testo stampato da Bergman e Cunningham, quam gentilis hebet stupor, non è un’innovazione dell’editore svedese, in quanto compare per la prima volta già nell’edizione del 1562 di Giselinus, che però due anni dopo corregge il testo in qua... hebet, accogliendo la lezione di U stampata da Sichardus (a sua volta ripreso dal Fabricius) e poi accolta anche da Weitzius; la lezione dell’Aldina, quam... habet, verrà ripresa nelle edizioni di de Nebrija e Heinsius, e quindi accolta senza eccezioni fino a Dressel. Il lavoro di Giuseppe Galeani, che costituisce la prima monografia in assoluto dedicata a perist. 7, rappresenta una novità editoriale da salutare con grande favore da parte degli studiosi di Prudenzio e più in generale di poesia latina tardoantica, ed è in grado di offrire non solo un significativo contributo alla conoscenza dell’inno a Quirino, finalmente affrancato dai (pre-)giudizi di matrice estetica che ne hanno condizionato la ricezione, ma anche una persuasiva linea interpretativa utile alla piena valorizzazione del suo ruolo all’interno del Peristephanon. Francesco Lubian Liceo Classico «G. Zanella», Schio (VI) francesco.lubian@zanella.gov.it SANDER M. GOLDBERG (ed.): Terence, Hecyra, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2013, pp. X-223. The Hecyra (Mother-In-Law) is Terence’s most controversial and underappreciated comedy. Accordingly, Goldberg’s new Hecyra commentary fills a conspicuous gap in the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series. G. has published important books and articles on Menander, Terence, and Plautus. This commentary has profited from his intimate knowledge of Greek and Roman comedy and ancient performance practice. That said, this book also represents a bit of a missed opportunity. G. sticks with the traditional take on Hecyra as a fundamentally flawed play that failed twice despite much recent work that has tried to refute this reading. Basically, G. offers the same interpretation of Hecyra that he gave thirty years ago in his book Understanding Terence (Princeton 1986, pp. 149-169). The commentary is organized like the others in the same series. A general introduction to the play (pp. 1-48) precedes the Latin text (pp. 49-83). G.’s notes form the main part of the book (pp. 84201), followed by appendices on Philumena’s pregnancy (pp. 203-204) and Greek analogues to the play (pp. 205-208). A bibliography (pp. 209-220) and index (pp. 221-223) conclude the book. The introduction provides a concise history of Roman comedy and the conditions under which it was produced. In particular, G. addresses the dates and organization of the religious festivals at which plays were performed, the short rehearsal times, the temporary stages, and audiences that were «well-versed in [the palliata tradition’s] devices and deeply appreciative of its effects» (p. 6). G. is suitably skeptical about our ability to reconstruct Terence’s life. Even his cognomen, Afer, cannot, G. writes, prove his African birth or freedman status (p. 10). G.’s discussion of Hecyra’s stage history and its alleged failures might confuse his readers. Like Gilula («SCI» 4 [1978], pp. 45 ss.) and Sandbach («CQ» 32 [1982], pp. 134 s.), G. extracts from the play’s two prologues that Hecyra never failed because the audience found it boring and 314 Recensioni left the theater (p. 16). On the contrary, Goldberg writes, the phrase populus convolat (Hec. prol. 2.40) reveals that «a second crowd arrived, whose demand for places disrupted a performance in progress» (p. 16, cf. 94). Twenty years ago, Holt Parker likewise concluded that Hecyra’s performances were interrupted by brawls that broke out when the original audience, who wanted to watch the rest of the show, fought with newcomers over their seats («AJP» [1996], pp. 592601). Yet when G. finally cites Parker’s article, he claims, «There is no indication, pace Parker 1996: 594-5, that in the case of Hecyra, the populus intent on these activities [boxing, tightrope walking] [...] was any other than the crowd already gathered for the play» (p. 17 nt. 49; cf. p. 88). G.’s statements are mutually exclusive, and readers may wonder which reconstruction of events they are supposed to believe. In any case, it soon becomes obvious that G. approaches Hecyra as a seriously flawed play, not as the fast-paced comic farce it actually is (see now Knorr in A. Augoustakis - A. Traill (ed.), A Companion to Terence, Malden 2013, pp. 295-317). In G.’s eyes, Hecyra has a «quiet and rather talky» start (p. 24) that leaves its audience «unsure where to invest their sympathy» (p. 21). G. recognizes that the plot moves «from mounting crisis to revelation to solution» (19), but does not appreciate the humor in young Pamphilus’ increasingly desperate, but comically self-inflicted plight. Instead, G. focuses on what made the play fail. Just as in his 1986 book (op. cit., pp. 159162), he argues that Terence should not have left out his Greek model’s divine prologue where a god prophesied the happy ending. For G., the unusual amount of suspense in Hecyra is a flaw, not a strength, because «reliance on suspense demands a particularly high level of emotional engagement to draw the audience into the action» (p. 20). G. also argues that Hecyra lacks a moral center since it is unclear with whom viewers are supposed to sympathize (p. 21). The young husband and his wronged wife are «problematic» (p. 21). Pamphilus is a selfish prig «without moral standing» (p. 22). Philumena never shows herself onstage «as if she were not a wife, but the wronged virgo of plays like Andria and Adelphoe » (p. 21). I would argue that Philumena’s invisibility emphasizes that she is indeed a wronged virgo. After all, she was raped before she got married. In the same vein, G. criticizes that the hetaera Bacchis is, at least in his eyes, neither «good» nor «bad» because Terence presents us with «four contradictory accounts» of her actions and motivations (p. 21). Of course, accounts like that of the clueless Syrus can simply be discounted. The two fathers are also unlikeable, according to G.; one is weak, the other a bully (p. 22). In contrast, he finds the two mothers, Sostrata and Myrrina, «distinctly more engaging». G. comments that they «drive the plot and generate its emotional power». Yet even the mothers, he notes, disappear from the action before the final resolution, and he claims that their sacrifices are never rewarded (p. 22). In the end, though, one could argue, both get what they want most, namely the reconciliation of their children. Young Pamphilus cannot have been as unsympathetic to Terence’s Roman audiences as one might assume. G. himself sees that Terence gives several characters extended monologues that address the spectators directly in «a bid for the audience’s sympathy» (p. 25). This is not only true for Sostrata, Myrrina, and Bacchis, but especially so for Pamphilus, whose monologue is by far the longest (ll. 361-414) and who addresses the audience in numerous brief asides (ll. 444-450, 615-616, 634, 638, 653, 701-705) 1. Pamphilus vies for our sympathy after he has unexpectedly 1 G.’s Latin text sets about half of all asides in parentheses. Unmarked are the asides of Pamphilus in ll. Athenaeum 106/1 (2018) 315 surprised his wife giving birth to what he must think is another man’s child. Terence’s theatersavvy audience, however, knew that an offstage-scream means Philumena is delivering Pamphilus’ own baby (cf. Knorr, op. cit., p. 307) and that he acts foolishly. In fact, Pamphilus is exactly the type of foolish and self-absorbed, but ultimately sympathetic young lover we see in other Terentian comedies. G. devotes nine pages of his introduction to prosody and meter (pp. 32-40). Since Hecyra is Terence’s «most musical play», he hopes to «encourage scansion» (pp. 39 s.). Unfortunately, most undergraduates will need more help than this section provides even on basic issues such as when a syllable is measured long or short. G. spends only half a page on syllable quantity, and he does not even mention the role of mute and liquid consonant pairs. G. adopts the Latin text of Kauer and Lindsay’s OCT edition, with four exceptions. At line 208, G. assigns the tag scio to Sostrata, which makes more sense than including it in Laches’ response. At 557 he writes solum solus (with the oldest manuscript, A), against Donatus’ solus solum (solu’ solum OCT). He also brackets Phidippus’ line 791 since it paraphrases what Laches has just said in 790. The Bembinus (A) omits it, and other manuscripts place it after 483, where it does not fit. Finally, at 880, G. gives the last word of the play, plaudite, not to a Cantor, but to the last speaker, Parmeno. These changes make good sense and have, in fact, also been adopted by one or both of the most recent Hecyra commentators (Carney, Pretoria 1963; Ireland, Warminster 1990). One passage where G.’s text omits the OCT’s square brackets must be an oversight: in the otherwise unmetrical line 661 read mirandum[ne]. G.’s line-by-line commentary of the play, the main part of the book (pp. 84 ss.), deals well with the morphology, syntax and stylistics of Terence’s Latin. His detailed philological notes owe much, of course, to Carney’s 1963 commentary, but also make good use of the scholiast Donatus and recent secondary literature. On p. 134, for example, he explains with R. Müller, Sprechen und Sprache, Heidelberg 1997, 113-115, that the suffix -dum in agedum (l. 315) «softens the imper(ative), which might otherwise be thought inappropriate for a slave addressing his master». G’.s comments on the play’s social and historical background are similarly helpful. On p. 144, for instance, he mentions the serious legal consequences that would threaten an Athenian husband who tried to rear a child born out of his wife’s adulterous relationship with another male. This helps readers to understand that Pamphilus is not just a heartless brute when he readily accepts his mother-in-law’s promise to expose the offending baby. Another strong feature of the commentary is its focus on comedic conventions and performance issues. In ll. 58-63, the hetaera Philotis complains that Pamphilus has abandoned her friend and colleague, Bacchis, in order to marry his neighbor’s virgin daughter. G. remarks that her complaint about the fickleness of male lovers inverts the conventional complaints by male comic lovers about the disloyalty of meretrices and «signals at once the play’s interest in presenting unexpected perspectives» (p. 97). At l. 815, G. implicitly expands on the comic inversion of the servus currens routine that others have noticed here by explaining how the Parmeno actor could visually underline Terence’s parody of this stock scene by manipulating his costume: «Parmeno here probably adjusts his costume accordingly» [i.e., fastens his tunic high and throws his cloak 452-453, 464-465, 628, 648-649, 670-671, 696, and 701-705; of Parmeno in 434-435; of Phidippus in 467 and 696; and of Bacchis and Laches in 727-730. 316 Recensioni over his shoulder] «and then makes his exit toward the wing in the required style, if not necessarily at the expected pace» (p. 192). Given G.’s interest in performance issues, however, it is surprising how little he writes about stage geography. He identifies the central door onstage as that of Bacchis (p. 96), but he never discusses the location of the houses of Laches and Phidippus. Is Laches’ house stage-left and Phidippus’ stage-right, as I would assume, or vice versa? Likewise, G.’s interest in scansion barely impacts his interpretations. He meticulously records every change of meter, but often fails to tell us why these changes matter. The most recent item listed in G.’s bibliography is T. Moore, Music in Roman Comedy, Cambridge 2012. Yet we do not learn, for instance, that the trochaic octonarius reflects «heightened emotion» (op. cit., p. 177), and there is no reference to Moore’s analysis of the frequent metrical shifts in the scene (ll. 516-565) where Phidippus and Myrrina are quarreling (op. cit., pp. 179 s.). These omissions aside, the commentary is usually right on the spot. Among the very few exceptions I would count the explanation of protatic characters as «characters who make a point» (p. 96) rather than as characters who appear only in the protasis or opening scene. On l. 519, G. remarks on quod: «conj.» (i.e., conjunction); in fact, quod and si, the next word, belong together and mean «but if». About quae tum mihi obsecutus fecisti (l. 688), G. writes: «obsecutus : constructed with acc. of the action and dat. of its instigator». It seems more natural to take quae as the accusative object of fecisti and mihi as the usual dative object required by obsecutus. On l. 802 ineptus hodie, G. takes hodie as an emphatic adverb; thus, the slave Parmeno calls himself «a complete fool». I would rather read this as one of several metatheatrical comments in Hecyra that emphasize how much the characters «today» differ from their stereotypical roles in other plays (cf. ll. 814, 815, 873, 876, 879). Instead of playing the typical Clever Slave role, Parmeno has «today» been sitting around offstage like a fool. Overall, G.’s commentary proves to be a worthy successor of its predecessors. It will clearly become the new standard commentary of this play, and I hope it will win the Hecyra many enthusiastic readers. Ortwin Knorr Willamette University oknorr@willamette.edu JAN DIRK HARKE, Corpus der Ro¨mischen Rechtsquellen zur antiken Sklaverei (CRRS), hrsg. von TIZIANA J. CHIUSI, JOHANNA FILIP-FRÖSCHL, J. MICHAEL RAINER, Teil III. Die Rechtspositionen am Sklaven, 2. Ansprüche aus Delikten am Sklaven, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag 2013, pp. XII-219. Wer eine umfassende Zusammenstellung von juristischen Texten zu «Ansprüchen aus Delikten am Sklaven» im römischen Recht sucht, wird in diesem Band wahrlich fündig. Es handelt sich hierbei um den sechsten von insgesamt sechsunddreißig Einzelbänden, die in zehn Teile gegliedert von der Mainzer Akademie als Corpus der ro¨mischen Rechtsquellen zur Antiken Sklaverei geplant sind. Er gehört zum dritten Teil, welcher die «Rechtspositionen am Sklaven» zum Thema hat. Harke stellt insgesamt 362, von einer «vorbereitenden Arbeitsgruppe» ausgewählte Texte zum von ihm bearbeiteten Rechtsbereich vor und deckt damit fast eintausend Jahre Entwick-